The momentum of the bullets pushed me back, the force of everything the same as a charging Clydesdale. When the spray of bullets started to wane, I looked over to see Francesca standing behind them because their attention had been entirely focused on me.
She fired the automatic rifle, went through the entire magazine in just a couple seconds. “Fuck the fuck off!”
They all dropped to the floor.
I shoved the body off me and realized I’d been shot in the shoulder and the forearm, but I didn’t actually feel it. Just felt the warm blood drip down my body. “Baby, are you okay?”
She screamed a war cry, her eyes glistening with angry tears. She was deranged, like the adrenaline gave her that high that I spent my life chasing. She breathed hard and then abruptly started to cry.
“Baby, are you okay?” I asked as I rushed to her.
She nodded as the tears dripped down her cheeks, but then her eyes focused on my arm when she realized I’d been hurt. “No…no…you’ve been shot.” She snapped out of her catharsis and grabbed my arm, getting blood all over her fingers.
“I’m fine. I’ve got to kill off any more who are outside before they get away.”
She looked at my shoulder. “You’ve been shottwice?—”
“You can clean me up after.”
“You could bleed to death.”
I grabbed the rifle from her hand then ripped the vest off a dead guy before I strapped it on, knowing I should have stored one here in case of something like this. I ran outside and saw the headlights of the vehicles as they tried to speed off. “Like I’m letting you assholes get away.” I sprinted along the house to the road and then fired my rifle into the sides of their vehicles, hoping they weren’t bulletproof like mine.
When glass shattered, I knew they weren’t. One car veered off the road and crashed into the vineyard. The other kept going with a spray of bullets in the door, flooring it over the dirt road in the dark. Then a car appeared out of nowhere and chased him down, a car that I recognized as Andre’s.
I watched Andre pursue him while the adrenaline still pumped hard in my veins and nearly made them burst. I continued to bleed out from my wounds, but I didn’t notice the pain from the bullets embedded in my flesh. Other cars pulled up, the headlights hitting me right in the face while I felt the rage dump on me like a bucket of cold water.
Warren.
I turned when I heard the sound of a door shut.
Leo stumbled out of the car as he moved toward the house, and with a look of abject horror, he stared at the destroyed house, all the windows shattered, with broken pieces reflecting from where they lay on the ground. His eyes wide, he trembled slightly as he started to pant. “Francesca…”
“She’s alright,” I said as I walked toward him. “She’s not hurt.”
But he continued to look at the house as if he didn’t hear a word I said. Overcome with shock and grief, he dropped to his knees.
“Leo, I said she’s okay.”
Tears formed in his eyes and streaked down his cheeks. He hadn’t reacted this way when Lombardi had hit the main house while Francesca was there alone, but perhaps because this was the second time, it was more than he could bear.
Francesca appeared in the open doorway, the door ajar from the way the guys had busted through it. She looked at her brother and saw him overwhelmed by emotion, and she ran to him.
He got to his feet and stumbled forward as he moved for her, grabbing her in his arms and squeezing her tight against him in an embrace I’d never seen them share before. They had a decent relationship, but I never considered them particularly close. But perhaps a near-death experience could change that in a heartbeat.
Another pair of headlights flooded my body as another vehicle came to a stop. Doors shut, and then the lights turned off. Don Mancini got out of the passenger door and walked toward me with his eyes on the house. He didn’t react the way Leo had, his exterior calm as he saw the violence the house had endured.
“Francesca isn’t hurt.”
His eyes flicked past me to his daughter, who continued to embrace Leo thirty feet away. Then he looked at me again, seeing the blood running down my arm and soaking into my t-shirt.
“There were about twenty of them. Most of them are dead. I think a few got away.”
He took a few more steps before he stopped and stared at me.
“I’ll hunt them down.”
His eyes were absolutely rigid as he looked at me. He possessed such a deep focus it was unclear if he heard what I said. He regarded me exactly the way he had when we’d first met—like he didn’t trust me one fucking bit.
